Gender Differences In College Sports

Eating disorders have become very common today, not only with women but men too (Bordo 2). This fixation with being skinny can be seen most often with modeling. Men and women both are required to be a certain weight if they want to be accepted to a modeling agency. Failure to stay under the weight limit will most likely terminate their contract with that agency. Not only do we see this in modeling or fashion but professional sports. I will never forget watching the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders show a few years ago and watching how big of a deal that the cheerleaders stay within their set weight limit. One of the cheerleaders was five pounds over that limit and was called in for a warning or she would be kicked off the team. Her response, “I guess I’ll have to cut out my favorite snack, PB and J’s.” That moment forever stuck out to me, and made me realize I would never wish to be put under a weight limit for sports, jobs, etc. People often forget starving your body of nutrients is another form of an eating disorder. Bordo claims that, “Eating disorders are also linked to the contradictions of consumer culture, which is continually encouraging us to binge on our desires at the same time as it glamorizes self-discipline and scorns fat as a symbol of laziness and lack of willpower.” (Bordo 2). With the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders as just an example, it goes to show also how much of an effect

1,445 student athletes from multiple different Division 1 schools participated in order to see the prevalence of eating disorders in a variety of different sports. The student athletes were asked questions about their athletic involvement, eating behaviors, drug and alcohol behavior and attitudes about their body image. The first set of results showed that 16.19% of females and 12.57% of males binge ate monthly (Powers, 1996). 81% of females reported feeling out of control of eating while only 45% of males reported feeling out of control. 23.9% of females reported vomiting as a form of purging but only 5.93% of males reported vomiting. When it came to diet pills, 14.30% of women reported usage while 2.16% of males reported usage. Although males’ results were always smaller than women, they are still at rise and suffering from eating disorders. With this study it is obvious that all athletes experience demands that push them to turn to abnormal and dangerous eating patterns.

The articles, “Title IX Under Fire As Colleges Cut Teams” by Jean Marbella and Carrie Wells and “40 Years Later, Title IX Is Still Fighting Perception It Hurts Men’s Sports” by Gloria Goodale, share different viewpoints on Title IX. Marbella and Wells share details and statistics showing that men’s teams are sometimes cut in order to meet Title IX’s requirements. However, Goodale counters that the reasons for the teams being cut was not Title IX, but the budgets of the university. She explains that Title IX is being framed for these incidents (Goodale). Goodale and Marbella and Wells argue two different viewpoints on the Title IX.

These young women feel an overwhelming need to make their bodies “better” in order to look like a model in a magazine. This may seem harmless, but it leads to young women turning to extremely excessive exercise routines and restricted eating in order to obtain their dream bodies (Fitzsimmons-Craft p. 144). Habits such as these lead to plenty of health problems, including dehydration, anorexia, and bulimia. The combination of body dissatisfaction and social comparison is toxic to young women’s physical and mental health.

Numerous studies have shown that athletes are more prone to developing eating disorders than nonathletes, as well as female athletes being more at risk than their male counterparts. Disordered eating is seen in athletes of all sports. (Johnson, 1994). The prevalence of eating disorders in the female athletic population ranges from anywhere between one and forty percent, depending on the athletes questioned, and the methodology used (Sundgot-Borgen, 1994). Rosen and Hough (1988) found that 32 percent of athletes practiced at least one pathogenic weight-control technique(141). A study done by Sundgot-Borgen, in 1994, controlled for the possibility that self-report data could be unreliable in numerous ways, including not informing coaches of their intentions, and assuring 100 percent confidentiality to the athletes who participated. It found that the risk for eating disorders is increased if an athlete's dieting is unsupervised, if there is an early start to sport-specific training, and/or extreme exercise (Sundgot-Borgen, 418).

According to Laing, “The sexualization of female athletes reduces their self-esteem and identity by dehumanizing and pressuring them into an unhealthy obsession with body image” (page: 3). This leads to the media making women self-conscious about their bodies. Athletes often hear people say of other athletes, “She is too big, she’s not muscular enough or she is too skinny about female athletes.” Because of the way in which the media portrays a particular set of females, all females tend to strive for this “perfect physique”. This can lead to serve cases like dissatisfaction with their appearance and eating disorders. Some may argue that women like the sexualized manner in which they media portrays them because it increases their self-esteem

After viewing the video “Dying to be Thin” and reading the articles on eating disorders, I felt as though my knowledge was broadened on this topic. Because I plan to work with adolescents, this awareness is crucial to my future career. Some of the statistics that the video shared were alarming; 8 million people suffer from eating disorders, with majority being women. The video shared that 80% of women are unhappy or not satisfied with their body. Eating disorders also hold the highest death rate of any psychiatric illness, with anorexia nervosa being the deadliest. The video also gave me insight as to what professional athletes and dancers experience, as well as valuable feedback from survivors.

Eating disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa, bulimia) are not rare in today’s society. They have become increasingly common among young women. Research indicates that there is a link between the media’s representation of “the perfect body” as well as ideals of attractiveness with dissatisfaction of body image and eating disorders (Ferguson, Munoz, Garza, & Galindo, 2013). In this current literature review, I will focus on the impact of eating disorders among female collegiate student-athletes with an emphasis on how sports can play an influential role in the development of eating disorders. Female collegiate student-athletes are at risk of developing eating disorders not only because of societal pressures on women to be thin, but also due to sport-specific pressures to change their body weight, size or shape. Factors that contribute to sport culture and pressure on female athletes include performance anxiety, revealing uniforms, and coaches’ influences on their athletes (Coker-Cranney & Reel, 2015).

Certain sports (such as gymnastics) and careers (such as modeling) are especially prone to reinforcing the need to keep a fit figure, even if it means purging food or not eating at all. (Grohol National Institute of Mental Health)

In the article “Body Image, Disordered Eating and Anabolic Steroid Use in Female Bodybuilders” by Gary S. Goldfield, he mentions how women and men often suffer from bulimia nervosa because of their eating habits. Especially bodybuilders, because of competing they have to look and be lean, so they diet harshly for their body fat levels to be low and more muscle definition to be seen. “Competitive bodybuilding is a sport that requires participants to be exceptionally lean and mesomorphic, thus participants may be vulnerable to developing

One thing is clear from the readings: college football played a huge role in the expansion of college athletics. While rowing was technically the first intercollegiate sport, we learn in Rader’s article that football began to supplant rowing in the late 1880’s. Football grew popular because it encompassed masculinity, and Harvard was the first college to form a team, with other New England schools following soon after. Rader made it clear that college students used the first football games as initiation rites for new students. In my opinion, this made football more like a fraternity- strengthening bonds and creating a community among students. It was also a game of the upper class. Since most students attending college at this time came from wealthy families, football created this national upper class that everyone wanted to be a part

The Article, from the Journal of Sport Behavior, “An Examination of Eating Disorder Profiles in Student Obligatory and Non-Obligatory Exercisers” written by Hilary Matheson, Anne Crawford-Wright (2000). The purpose of this study was “to highlight risk behaviors indicated in a student obligatory and non-obligatory exercise population comparing the result to other previous research” (Matheson & Crawford-Wright 2000). According to the authors there has been extensive research that focuses on the “relationships between

The next study subject studied how perfectionism can translate into eating disorder pathology. The purpose of the article is to examine the relationship of eating disorders with the role of body dissatisfaction (Boone, Soenens, & Luyten, 2014).

The research study examined possible correlations between various types of perfectionism and levels of recovery from eating disorders. The researchers conducted their experiment by comparing different conceptions of perfectionism across a healthy control group and fully recovered, partially recovered, and current (active) eating disorder groups. The researchers who conducted this experiment were Anna M. Bardone-Cone, PhD, Katrina Sturm, BA, Melissa A. Lawson, MD, Dr. Paul Robinson, MD, and Roma Smith, LPN. Anna M. Bardone-Cone, Katrina Sturm, and Melissa A. Lawson are from the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia Missouri. Dr. Paul Robinson and Roma Smith are from the

Female athletes are often very body conscious with respect to weight and appearance. There is evidence that a positive body image is often associated with physical activity. Though the issue of body image in athletes is not only negatively influenced by social media and other outside influences, there are also pressures to achieve and maintain an unrealistic body shape and size but is also influenced by demands to be thin to maximize performance (Thompson, 2014). In sporting populations it is important to look hard for the presence of disordered eating, not simply because eating disorders are potentially serious conditions but also because they can be difficult to detect (Currie, 2010).